Scranton pays back "scared' DeSales

February 15, 2004|By John Heilig Special to The Morning Call - Freelance

When the DeSales University women's basketball team gave Scranton its only loss on Jan. 24 at Billera Hall, it did it through tenacious defense and accurate shooting.

Scranton turned the tables when the Bulldogs came to their gym Saturday, spoiling any thoughts DeSales may have had in gaining a home-court advantage in the Freedom Conference playoffs. The Royals won, 68-40, and the game wasn't that close.

The loss leaves DeSales with an 18-4 overall record, 8-3 in the Freedom Conference. Scranton is now 22-1 and 11-1 in the conference.

In the men's game that followed, Mike Venafra lit up the scoreboard with a career-high 27 points, including four 3-pointers, as the Bulldogs topped the Royals, 76-69.

Jim Zinn, added 13 points, and Harry Morra 12 for the Bulldogs, who improved to 19-3 overall and 9-2 in the Freedom Conference. Scranton dropped to 4-19 overall and 2-10 in the conference.

The women were still feeling the sting of their defeat.

"Defense was the key, but we couldn't even run our offense well,' said Amy Yencho, a Liberty High graduate, who scored eight points. "We were just playing tentative."

Alyssa Antolick took it a step further.

"It looked like we never dribbled before, like we never passed before, like we never played basketball before," said the Bethlehem Catholic grad, who came into the game averaging 17.4 points a game but was held to nine. "We never got out of that. We played scared."

"It was totally a team thing in that we all shut down together," Antolick added.

"It was a bad dream," Yencho added.

DeSales was in the game for a short while. Yencho's basket gave the Bulldogs an early 2-0 lead. After Kate Pierangeli's 3-pointer put Scranton up, a pair of Antolick foul shots gave DeSales its final lead, 4-3, with just 2:44 gone in the game. The Bulldogs tied the game two minutes later, but that was it.

In the last 15:27 of the first half, the Royals outscored DeSales 24-7 to lead, 31-14 going into the locker room. Scranton scored the last 11 points of the half, as well as the first six of the second half.

DeSales shot just 19.2 percent from the floor in the first half, and 26 percent for the game. In addition, the Bulldogs turned the ball over 25 times leading to 21 Scranton points. The Royals had 19 steals.

"I think the girls had a pretty good assessment of the game the way I saw it," said DeSales coach Fred Richter. "We didn't show up. When Scranton put pressure on the ball, we folded. Our panic went into our defensive stuff and they ran an offensive clinic. We looked very bad."

The DeSales men had an easier time of it, although the Scranton men made it a tight game. The Bulldogs jumped out to a 9-0 lead, but saw Scranton scramble back to take a 21-17 lead with 7:58 left in the first half. But with Venafra hitting four 3-pointers en route to his career game, DeSales came back to lead 33-30 at the half.

The Royals, behind Brian O'Donnell's 25 points and 16 from Bill Burke, led by as many as four points in the second half. Over the final 13 minutes, though, the Bulldogs applied relentless pressure and good offense to win going away.

A key basket was a 3-pointer by Zinn with 1:34 remaining that pushed the lead to 71-64.

DeSales coach Scott Coval said he thought Scranton played a much better game than the last time they played.

"We got a great effort from Harry Morra," Coval said. "He was terrific off the bench. He scored, he made a couple of 3s, he rebounded, he played defense. Drew Christman played well in the second half, too, but it was Mike Venafra who kept us in the game."

"If I want to play, my job is to come in and do whatever I have to do," Morra said. "I have to get in front of a guy that's 40 pounds heavier than I am, or hit a 3-pointer whenever I can. I work hard. And it's gotten me where I am. It feels great to have played well and win."